New Details Emerge in Sofia's Gruesome Quintuple Murder

The entrance door of the apartment in Sofia where the slain family was found. Photo by BGNES

Bullet wounds have been found on the bodies of all five victims of the gruesome murder of a family in the Bulgarian capital Sofia.

The State-owned Bulgarian National Television, BNT, reported the news, citing results of the autopsies, which have concluded late Friday evening. Previous police reports noted that the body of the family's oldest son, Vladimir, had only stab wounds.

In addition, during the final search of the apartment, where the bodies were found, the investigators found a fifth bullet shell.

The main lead is that the father killed his relatives since gunpowder residue was found only on his hands. The police, however, are still following the lead that one of the sons, who is said to have been mentally unstable, fired the shots.

It is presumed the blood bath occurred at the beginning of the week. The 5 bodies were discovered Thursday evening in a locked apartment of a residential building in the Sofia "Gotse Delchev" district. They were the ones of the father Vasil Savov, 55, his wife Nataliya, 54, their sons, Vladimir, 27, and Georgi, 21, and grandmother, Zdravka, who was Nataliya's mother.

According to Bulgaria's Trud (Labor) daily, before committing suicide, the killer washed the blood from his hands and face, and left the water in the sink running, which caused a flooding in the apartment underneath. The neighbors went to check what was going on and discovered the gruesome crime.

Insider ources, cited by Trud speaking off-the-record, have said that the younger brother Georgi started the ordeal by attacking Vladimir with a knife. The father, an employee of the Defense Ministry, interfered and shot Geogri, then Nataliya who had been trying to help her sons, and then Zdravka to eliminate her as a witness.

Meanwhile, 24 Chassa (24 Hours) quotes Vladimir's former high school homeroom teacher voicing sheer dismay after learning the news. She says Vladimir has been a quiet boy, much slimmer than the parents, a boy who tried to fit in and has been liked and even protected by his classmates.

Bulgaria psychiatrists have commented after the murder made headline that parents in the country have a hard time accepting their children's psychiatric disorders and this delays treatment by years; the care for those people is limited to some medications and the families are left to deal with them on their own, all while, over some typical Bulgarian character traits, they are trying to conceal the illnesses from society.

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